Mitch’s reflection: As of early afternoon on Thursday, September 10th, fifteen days after the horrific Nepal flooding of August 26, 2026, the numbers are staggering. From just this tiny, narrow river corridor, comprising the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers, where the damage only extended about 40 miles, there have been 1,367 bodies recovered, with an additional 5,132 people still officially missing (we imagine there are hundreds if not more, uncounted). Some bodies were washed as far downstream as 150 miles further in India. Adding to the pain of the families of the victims, only 102 individual bodies of the dead have actually been identified, due to the unimaginable battering and decomposition by the flooding and washing downstream. The majority of the families, who are Hindu, have been holding funerary rites, or cremations, using effigies of their missing ones. As hope dwindles, day 13 of the death is an important marker – one that most families are not willing to skip, even as they remain uncertain about the actual whereabouts of the body.
Initially, there was hope of finding surviving hydroelectric power plant workers in tunnels and underground facilities. But of the original 900 missing workers from those 15 different power plants along the corridor, only three have been rescued, and authorities estimate there are only about 120 of them who have a chance of being found alive at this point. Sadly, we count one of those workers, an engineer, among our acquaintances here in Kathmandu.
While geologists and climate scientists are still hesitant to implicate one specific climate-change-related incident in this disaster, it is true that the Langtang region had just had the second-warmest temperatures for the month of July since record-keeping began in 1970. And they do indeed blame the falling rock, ice, and debris on the melting permafrost, which has been described as the glue that holds the mountains together. And if we can say that climate change has been caused by the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that certain companies, industries, and countries have historically contributed more to this situation than others, Nepal and its people are certainly near the bottom of the list of carbon emitters. In fact, I read that out of 10,000 parts of carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution until now, only 4 parts were from Nepal. That’s 0.04%. Another way to think about it is that 99.96% is from everyone else.
We have been seeing and hearing many people refer to this discrepancy and injustice in the media and in our conversations with growing frustration. If the people of Nepal (and the 10% of those killed or still missing who are foreigners) are going to suffer such climate-related disasters, what is the responsibility of those countries more guilty of causing climate change? Instead of talking about aid and relief for these disasters, what about the idea of recompensation?
Last week, the Nepal foreign affairs minister said:
“We are shifting our diplomatic framework from ‘aid’ to ‘justice and compensation’. This is not a matter of charity; it is a matter of legal and moral liability.”
In fact, Nepalis are looking to their new Prime Minister to give voice to these concerns on the international stage. Balen Shah is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on September 24th, and is expected to make the case for climate justice and demand financial compensation from international polluters, with the devastating floods as a backdrop. Of course, in the current political climate, one can easily lose hope that wealthier nations, companies or individuals will ever agree to this idea.
Lora’s reflection: I have been thinking a lot about normal, the new normal, adjusting to something that seems incomprehensible–Isn’t it the strange way of the world? Wrecked/wracked by grief and loss, life just goes on. When I was in my last year at Goshen College, I did a May term, month-long intensive class in Guatemala. It was a liberation theology class. And there are two things that stay with me, especially as I am living here. The first is that you don’t know the impact of aid. You cannot think through to the end the final outcome of development aid. We heard stories there of tremendous transformation, growth and multi-generational change brought by the aid– and conversely, we heard stories of people with solar ovens being targeted by the military/militia because of the help they were given. Yesterday we were sitting with friends, and we heard about an incident of post-earthquake aid work that was sponsored by DFID (former UK Government Aid agency) where a hiking path was created to increase trekking in an area hard hit by the earthquake. The project was successful and resulted in local job creation for a year and a beautiful new path. The next year there was funding from the local government to change that new walking path to a motorable road, and the DFID funders were so frustrated because all of their work was torn up to make a road. But the people in the village were pleased because there was work again, for a year, to create the road, and it improved access to the village. Now there is so, so much reconstruction work to be done. I don’t even think that we can imagine all of it yet. It cannot just be rebuilding to then get washed away in another flood; it needs to be careful, measured, creative and imagine a new way of being in this land of climate disasters.
The second lesson from my time in Guatemala came one day while I was talking with the father of a friend, who happened to be staying at Semilla (the Anabaptist Mennonite seminary hosting us) at the same time we were. I was overwhelmed with what I was learning in the firehose of the intensive, concerned for the state of the world, certain that I couldn’t have any kind of impact anywhere. And he said to me something like, “What gives me hope in the world is that people fall in love; they keep making babies; they continue to survive.” At the time, for my young idealistic self, I thought, “That is not enough. That is barely anything.” Today, I think that is enough. I think it is amazing that despite all that is painful and difficult and full of grief in the world, we still turn toward each other; we still turn toward love, and we want to make more of it. More connections, more vulnerability, more beauty. This is what I am holding onto in this time of devastation- the turning toward. The offering a helping hand, people turning up en masse to help others and the small moments of love and interpersonal connection and humanity.
And life just fills with grief, grief, and joy, interchangeably. My own grief and global grief, and even in this time we also lost that great poet and farmer, Wendell Berry. And one of his prayer/poems is one of my favourites (I have so many); he says, “When I rise up/ let me rise up joyful/like a bird. /When I fall/ let me fall without regret/ like a leaf.” And here is my favourite choral version of these words (with some additional ones by Thich Nhat Hanh: When I Rise Worldwide Choir. May they be our prayer and meditation.
And the dailiness of life: It continues. We celebrated Lora’s birthday this past Sunday with kind words, flowers and sourdough bread and are looking forward to the UMN retreat, which is coming early this year (in September) and then a trip to visit the hospital in Tansen in October. Some of you have been asking about our future plans; we are planning on continuing our work at United Mission to Nepal here in Kathmandu until the summer of 2028. You might remember that we initially agreed to work in Nepal for three years, so now staying until the summer of 2028 extends that by a year and a half.
